0 Meringue Coffee Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Even though it's called a coffee cake it does not contain any coffee (unless you want to use coffee as a flavoring then it would be a coffee coffee cake). It's also less of a cake than it is a bread. But if a bread contains enough butter, eggs, milk or sugar, I guess it can be called a cake. Regardless of its name, you can call it delicious.



The yeasted dough was a breeze to handle. After kneading, it was smooth and not at all sticky. After it had risen and was ready to be filled, the dough offered no resistance to the rolling pin. In fact, I didn’t even use a rolling pin for the second half of my dough. I just patted it out into a rectangle.



At first the meringue seemed like an unusual addition, but the meringue acted like a neutral binding layer between the dough and the ingredients in the filling. Upon baking, the meringue had melted and soaked into the bread leaving behind a hint of sweetness and allowed the filling to shine through. I filled mine with five spice powder, walnuts and chocolate chips.

The only tricky part was to roll it up jelly roll style and then into a ring without squeezing out any of the filling and meringue. I also needed to be sure the seams were well pinched so all the filling and meringue stayed inside.




For my first ring I cut slits in the shaped dough after the dough's second rise, but the cutting seemed to deflate it a bit. So for my second ring, I cut the slits immediately after I had filled and shaped it and let it do its second rise already cut. No deflation here.



As much as I like the sweet filled bread, after tasting it I knew that this dough would be equally good in a savory application. After my office's weight loss challenge ends next month and I can allow myself to indulge a bit every once in a while, I am definitely going to use this dough with ingredients like cheese or pork.

From the feedback I received, it seemed that this cake had a nostalgic quality to it. Quite a few tasters mentioned that it reminded them of something their grandmothers baked. That's the best compliment that I could receive.

Thanks to Jamie and Ria for a lovely and versatile recipe. Please check out what the other Daring Bakers created by heading over to our kitchen.


Continue reading...